One Misery For Another
by DeathBySnooSnoo
Summary: As Harry tries to undo the miseries in his past, he stumbles across a former enemy and realizes that he isn't the only one in need of a little comfort, companionship, and more... HD spoilers, epilogue compliant, albeit in a rather cheating way...
1. Prologue

Harry Potter stormed out of his house, a rather crumpled piece of parchment in one hand and a small, delicate looking instrument on a long golden chain in the other. Ronald Weasley followed cautiously a short distance behind, looking rather terrified.

"Harry!" the redhead called out, "Harry stop. You can't… you can't do this."

Harry stopped in his tracks and turned viciously upon his friend. "Just watch me, Ron! You can't stop me."

"Harry," Ron pleaded, "you're acting like a child! I know it hurts but this isn't really solving anything!"

"Oh, but it is, Ron. It solves everything!"

"I know she hurt you, but think of your kids! If you do this, you are condemning them to non-existence! That," Ron sputtered, frustrated, "that is barely above murder, Harry!"

"It is kinder than to force them to live a life where their family has been torn apart. Trust me, I know!"

"Are you telling me that if you had the choice, you would rather erase your existence from the parchment of time, than to face your suffering, triumph over it, and revel in the satisfaction of fulfilling your destiny? Is that what you are telling me?"

"That was rather poetic for you, Ron. Have you gone completely soft?"

Ron's face fell, and when he spoke, his voice was barely a whisper. "Harry, she's my sister. I know you are angry with her, I am too, but she is still my sister. If you do this, I can never forgive you."

Harry laughed a dry, humorless laugh. "Ron, if I do this, you will never know it, because the 'parchment of time' as you so uncharacteristically elegantly put it, will have been rewritten, and I will have spared myself this misery."

"Spared yourself one misery to be replaced by another, mate. You know there is no way in which to avoid getting hurt."

"Better to sever the limb early on than allow infection to spread through the entire body."

"And what about me?" Ron asked incredulously. "Have you thought of the pain you will be causing me? She is my _sister! _And what if your tampering affects me and Hermione? You know I have no chance at finding anyone else like her. She is the flame to my cauldron; I am nothing without her!

"And what of our children, Harry! If Hermione and I never, never… if we never do… then our children will cease to exist, as well."

"Ron," Harry said in a voice colder than his best friend had ever before heard, "I have made my decision. I will not allow Ginny to do this to me."

"But she has already done it to you! She left you. She took James, Albus, and Lily with her. I know it hurts, but you have to think about this rationally, please!"

"No."

Ron, in a final, desperate bid, lunged at Harry, but it was too late. Harry had swung the chain around his neck twisted the time-turner, and vanished. The heated letter from Ginny in which she had expressed her desire to never again lay eyes upon Harry Potter, lay crumpled at Ron's feet.

Twenty-one years of history undone zoomed past Harry in a blur. His eyes did not even try to focus on any of the images flitting around him; he was concentrated solely on a single image that was burned upon his mind's eye: Ginny.

Nineteen and a half years of bliss with the girl of his dreams was not worth the pain of losing her. He was determined to stop her and his younger self from marrying. He had no plan, only a bitter eruption of rage, confusion, and pain in the pit of his stomach to lead him to his goal.

He had accepted his misery at the hands of Voldemort to be destiny. He had accepted the deaths of so many of those close to him over the years as inevitability. He could not bring himself to accept Ginny's betrayal.

Finally, for the first time in his life, he had been completely, absolutely, and unwaveringly happy. Ginny had broken that like a shattered mirror that had once reflected a dream. Only scattered shards and jagged fragments remained, and they had sliced him more deeply than Voldemort had ever done.

Finally the world settled around him and began moving forward at its proper speed. Harry was not sure of the exact date, and even if he was, he would not be able to remember where he and Ginny would have been so long ago anyways. His only hope was to cautiously and covertly keep a watch on the Burrow, as they would inevitably turn up there eventually.

He did not have to wait long. Ginny, the younger version of Harry, Ron, Hermione, and Mrs. Weasley all came marching purposefully out of the front door of the Weasley's precarious looking home. Everyone with the exception of Mrs. Weasley was holding identical pieces of parchment in their hands. Booklists, older Harry knew.

Before older Harry could approach the group, they had congregated in a tight-knit group just beyond the Burrow's front gate. Younger Harry drew Ginny close, kissed her lightly on the cheek, and in a collection of _pops_ they disappeared.

Older Harry waited a few minutes before he too disappeared for what he knew had been the other's destination: the Leaky Cauldron. Having foregone the final year of their formal education in favor of hunting horcruxes, a necessary step in the ultimate task of killing Lord Voldemort once and for all, older Harry clearly remembered how he, Hermione, and Ron were now registered together with Ginny, who, along with every other enrolled Hogwarts student that had remained to fight in the final battle against the Death Eaters, had been progressed to her next year despite the uncompleted term, in their seventh year of study at the Wizarding school.

As he was wrenched from the place upon which he stood, and set down in front of the dim establishment with a creaking old sign, Harry felt nothing. He was far beyond disorientation in his state of concentration and rage.

Purposefully, he strode through the bar, tapping his wand on a specific brick in the wall out back, and stepped foot into Diagon Alley. Scanning the crowds quickly, he swore under his breathe. There was no vibrantly red hair visible among the masses; he had lost them.

Hoping his aged appearance would help disguise him, Harry made his way back through the bar to stand watch on the opposite side of the Muggle street. As if he had needed yet another devastating blow, his wife had stolen his invisibility cloak to pass on to their oldest son, James who, along with the rest of their children, her letter had assured him, he would never lay eyes on again.

Time crept by slowly, as if punishing him for encroaching upon its absolute design. Several times he thought that he had caught a glimpse of one of them, but always he was mistaken.

As afternoon faded into evening, Harry at last saw the gleaming glint of the radiant red hair that could only belong to Ginny. Unsure of how he was to proceed, he took a few determined steps towards her, but stopped.

She was much closer to him here than she had been at the Burrow, and seeing her, young, sweet and innocent, had caused a crack to penetrate his forcefully hardened heart. What was he doing? Surely he could not go through with this! Ron had been right, he had not been thinking properly! What would forcefully separating Ginny and his younger self do to him? Do to her? And, as Ron had said, what about their children? He could not imagine the last several years without them.

About to turn and leave, the unthinkable happened. Ginny had glanced up and a look of confused recognition had flitted across her face. Staring at him quizzically, she started towards him, heedless of her surroundings.

Harry's stomach twisted into a sickening knot as the squeal of tires from a Muggle automobile tore through the air. Harry knew that, to the Muggle driver, the beautiful young woman, now inescapably in the path of his vehicle, had appeared out of nowhere.

Younger Harry screamed and burst from the bar, trying with all of his might to reach the girl of his dreams to save her, but he was too far away. From across the street, an older, darkly hooded and cloaked man had had the same reaction, and as younger Harry dove, his arms outstretched towards his love, the deafening crunch of bone yielding to metal filled the street, and two bodies flew through the air before crumpling to the ground.

Younger Harry knew in an instant that they were both dead. He had to cut off his approach long enough to suppress the sudden and violent urge to vomit. The tangled mass of flesh and cloth that had once been two separate individuals was now indistinguishable. Had Harry not been certain that Ginny was one of the victims; he never would have been able to guess it from the remains.

In his grief, Harry never even thought to wonder who the older stranger had been, or why he had given his life in the attempt to save a young woman.


	2. Chapter 1

Harry had not shaven in several weeks. His hair, unkempt as ever, and now hopelessly tangled, hung over his eyes and covered his scar. He had exchanged his trademark glasses for a pair with dark plastic, rectangular rims.

The result was that he was virtually unrecognizable. Even Aberforth, who was currently pouring Harry another glass of fire whiskey, had barely determined his identity, and that was only after Harry had allowed his former headmaster's younger brother to look directly into his eyes.

Sitting beside him, another mysterious figure, his face obscured by a tattered black cloak, leaned heavily on the Hog's Head bar's countertop, nursing his drink. The man did not talk, did not look around, and hunched his shoulders wearily forward whenever the rare patron ventured too near. The only skin left unhidden by the shabby cloak was that of his hands, which were almost unnaturally pale.

Harry ignored the stranger at first, but something about his long, slender fingers and the way they nervously, yet nonchalantly, almost arrogantly, caressed the rim of his glass with the apparent air of nobility, was eerily familiar and unnerving. He tried not to stare too blatantly as he racked his brain for where he had seen such a thing before. Suddenly it hit him.

"Draco!" he half spoke, half whispered, standing to his feet and gazing intently at his neighbor's hooded head. The cloaked figure jumped and stormy grey eyes flashed upwards, veiled by long, dark eyelashes beneath a covering of matted blonde hair.

"How did you… who are…? H-Harry!" Draco fumbled, his expression changing from shock, to confusion, recognition, uncertainty and then fear so quickly it very nearly made Harry's head spin.

"Draco…" Harry repeated, softly and gently. He had felt more sympathy than malice towards his schoolyard nemesis since he had been forced to join Voldemort's ranks around two years previously. "I was afraid that the Ministry was going to send you to Azkaban!"

Draco's gaze faltered. Harry immediately noticed the telltale signs of repeated, continuous dementor attacks, the same signs his godfather had worn for as long as Harry had known him, etched upon Malfoy's pale face.

"They did," Draco whispered, his voice wavering, "but only for one month. They took pity on me because I was young, and because I was willing to tell them everything I knew. My," his voice failed him again, "my parents were not so lucky. My mother was sentenced to three years, and my father to fifteen."

The silver eyes, so full of hopelessness and remorse, burned into Harry's mind. "I never got the chance to thank you… to thank you for giving testimony on my mother's behalf. Your account of her lying for you, claiming to the Dark Lord that you were dead, helped to undo some of the damage I caused her when I agreed to be interrogated under the influence of Veritaserum. My father will never forgive me. I never expected their questions to be so… personal."

"What do you mean?" asked Harry, eager for the opportunity to take his mind off his own grief, and also convinced that the sooner and the more Draco talked about this, the easier his recovery from his time in Azkaban would be.

Draco took a deep, measured breath before continuing. He seemed to be desperate for companionship, any companionship at the moment. "They did not only ask me about things directly related to Death Eaters and the Dark Lord, as I had expected. They asked me about my family life before his return."

The little color in young Malfoy's face faded, and he looked down at his hands. "My father, when he is frustrated, when he is angry… he gets a little _mean_. I mean, I deserve everything he does. I should know better than to provoke him when he gets like that… but, he hurts… he used to hurt… me and my mother. He used the cruciatus curse on me a few times, and the ministry seemed to think that that was evidence enough that he had willingly remained a Death Eater, and was not forced back into service upon the Dark Lord's return. That conclusion factored heavily into his sentencing. The fact that my mother was unwilling to intervene cast a poor shadow upon her as well."

Draco looked so forlorn and ashamed; Harry was filled with the sudden urge to hug the former Slytherin in an attempt to cheer him up. He compromised and lightly patted the blonde boy's back.

Malfoy attempted a half smile, and when his eyes met Harry's this time, they were filled with desperate longing. Harry recognized the look; it could have been emanating from his own soul. They both craved not only companionship, someone to help them forget their pain, but also an outlet for their pent up frustration.

The solution seemed to come to them both at once. Fumbling for each other's hand, they hastily paid for their drinks, and half dragged each other out of the bar. Reason and practicality were too cruel to them, and so the pair abandoned them completely.

Draco's hands curled into fists in Harry's cloak and he pushed the Savior of the Wizarding World roughly against the Hog's Head bar's outer wall and devoured his mouth with his own.


End file.
